


Shared Pleasure

by matrixrefugee



Category: Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-30
Updated: 2011-04-30
Packaged: 2017-10-18 19:31:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/192455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matrixrefugee/pseuds/matrixrefugee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Catherine and Mister Tilney share an afternoon together reading and chatting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shared Pleasure

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for [](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/profile)[**comment_fic**](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/)'s "Northanger Abbey - Catherine/Henry - reading together"

Mister Tilney found Catherine curled deep in an armchair, reading the second volume of Udolpho, so wrapped in her reading, that she did not hear him approaching. As he leaned over her, his shadow falling over her, she jolted and looked up at him.

"Are you indulging in some forbidden pleasure?" he asked with a smile.

"I hope that I've not overstepped some dictate of your father's," she asked, quickly putting her book aside. A thought crossed her mind that General Tilney might have set some decree that all tales of romance and adventure and any horrid books were forbidden to enter the walls of Northanger Abbey, and that if any were to be found, that the book was to be thrown onto the nearest hearth and burned, and the reader compelled to read only dull exemplary tales or books of sermons. She had a fleeting vision of a great conflagration, a bonfire of the vanities in the courtyard.

"Hardly: my father finds such books a simple waste of paper and ink, and the reading thereof a waste of good time. But I assure you solemnly that this has not stopped my sister and I from venturing into the reaches of Udolpho, or from observing the descent into iniquity of the Monk," he replied.

"I should pray not," she said. "I would think one's life deprived if one is not allowed to read a novel that brings a chill to your blood."

"It helps to appreciate a quiet life, doesn't it?" he said. "And by comparison to the perils experienced by a girl who's been kidnapped or nearly forced to marry corrupt nobleman twice her age, the horrors of a humdrum life, such as losing one's bonnet or having one's maid make a mess of one's hair, pale by contrast."

"Mister Tilney, you're being ridiculous," she said, but she could hardly keep from giggling at his jests.

"Am I or my jokes subject to ridcule?" he asked, trying to sound offended but with his eyes glinting with mischief.

"No, of course not," she said, then she caught the meaning of his jab and laughed. His jokes could be so opaque that she sometimes did not see them, until she realized that he was playing with words.


End file.
